Cosmonauts always train for “all types of emergencies, which can happen all the way from blast-off to the return from the International Space Station (ISS),” Serova explained. She commended her colleagues for “educated decisions” as they successfully landed the space capsule.

“The cosmonaut’s job is among the most dangerous jobs in the world. Today we saw that one more time.”

Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague successfully pulled off an emergency landing in central Kazakhstan on Thursday after their Soyuz rocket suffered a booster malfunction. Both crewmen survived and have been evacuated.

Serova, who spent 167 days onboard of the ISS and is now a Russian lawmaker, said that it is too early to talk about the exact causes of the Soyuz accident. She added that similar malfunctions had occurred during space launches in the past, and that the emergency landing system is specifically designed to save the crew in such instances.